


tipping point

by PandaHero



Series: sad vaguely canadian gays au [1]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Dissociation, Eating Disorders, F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, me? back on my gay mental illness projecting bullshit? It's More Likely Than You Think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:35:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28229256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PandaHero/pseuds/PandaHero
Summary: It's the people she spends the most mediocre amount of time with that get to see what she does to herself.
Relationships: Catra & Entrapta & Scorpia (She-Ra)
Series: sad vaguely canadian gays au [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2067903
Comments: 3
Kudos: 34





	tipping point

Catra expends a great amount of energy ensuring people only see what she wants them to.

She strives for- no,  _ craves _ the dichotomy of being seen without being felt, seeking attention without being known. Anger underlies her every waking moment. Frustration, self-loathing, terror. And though she would never admit it, the company of others eases this pressure. On the other side of the proverbial and easily-flipped coin, when someone gets a little too curious or seems a little too involved with her, it implodes into a black hole of disconnected anguish and panic that sees Catra lashing out and destroying the relationship. No one needs to know anything about her. They just need to like her.

Her key to keeping it all under wraps, is to split her emotions between places and people. 

At home, she tries her best to stay calm, to relax, to swallow her seething and force herself soft. Her housemates-- Adora, Glimmer, and Bow-- are all a bunch of ridiculous, goody two-shoes University students. Not that they don’t have their issues, of course, but overall she considers the three to have the emotion-strain-capacity of a marshmallow. It’s less that she doesn’t want them to see, and more that she knows they won’t be able to handle it. 

When she starts to get restless, she’ll hang out with Scorpia more. Scorpia herself isn’t particularly wild, but she has a bad habit of not saying no and just bringing bandages. She’ll take Catra wherever she wants, keeps her from running into the woods, and is essentially the only reason she has yet to freeze herself to death walking in the middle of the night. More often than not, Entrapta tags along with them. Her emotional lag and general chaotic energy mix surprisingly well with Catra’s listless mania, though there reaches a point where she knows even they couldn’t put up with her.

That’s when she turns to Hordak. From moment one, the man made it clear that he wouldn’t put up with her either. But the difference between wouldn’t and couldn’t makes all the difference to Catra in this state, and she’ll find herself engaging in bet after bet, bout after bout, blow after blow with this unhappy man she knows little of. The most personal they’ve been with each other is exchanging the brand name of their handwraps; but he knows how to give consistent nosebleeds and takes losing poorly. That’s all she needs from him. 

In every place, with each different person she seeks out, Catra hides something. At home she hides her anger, hides all the ‘ugly’ away from her ‘beautiful’ roommates. With Scorpia and Entrapta she hides her happiness, the smiling, the relief of being out in the open air with someone she cares about. From Hordak, she hides her life, her motives, her reason for needing to beat each other senseless on the weekly. And none of them get to see how she truly treats herself.

She washes everyone’s dishes, so they don’t ask what she had.

She complains about Gimmer’s cooking, so Scorpia doesn’t pull into the nearest drive thru. 

She throws the fight in his favor, so no one can call it fainting.

After all, starving feels like love when it’s all your mother taught you to do. But no one needs to know. She tries exceptionally hard to make sure no one knows.

Yet somehow, defying all possible logic and strategy, Scorpia and Entrapta are the first to  _ see _ her. Not the people she shares her living space with, not the man she bares her carnal nothingness to. No, it's the people she spends the most mediocre amount of time with. The people who, by all means, should remain at a fixed and constant emotional distance from her. They don't see her daily life, they don't see her active passion and anger, they only see her smirk.

Or so they should.

Snow clings to the thin fabric of Catra's shirt; some ratty thing she nabbed from Adora before she left the house. Scorpia's car seems to be getting further by the second, and the erratic sound of Entrapta's boots crunching behind her does little to quell her oncoming vertigo. 

They've just come from the gas station, armfuls of candy and two fresh packets of cigarettes being their treasure. Scorpia had come to pick her up early in the morning for a day in town, their usual Saturday routine. She spent the previous night fighting, smoking, pacing her room at odd hours of the moon. Half a pack in one sitting. Bow mentioned the smell in the morning, but true to his conflict avoidant marshmallow nature, didn't question it. Neither did he question the three cups of coffee. The twitching of her left eye, the low grumble of her stomach. Now, it's coming back to bite her.

Unsure if the constant fuzzing white blur in her vision is the failing of her sight or just the worsening of the snow, Catra exhales a frustrated fog, and begins to slow. The chatter behind her fizzles. A deep, spiking shiver rolls through her entire body, and she's struck with a sudden feeling of smallness. 

A hand on her shoulder. Voices in either ear. She opens her mouth to brush them aside, tries to pull her lips back into an aloof smirk. It doesn't feel right, and she's sure it doesn't look right either.

"Don't," she manages in a slurred groan, "it's fine." Her legs wobble like cooling jello. She can only pick out bits of Entrapta's shrill and panicked rambling.

"... pale… shallow, unsteady… hold her…"

Strong, sturdy arms slip beneath her own, and panic seeps slick into her veins; liquid nitrogen coursing through her system. Her shakey attempt at pulling away ends only in a rasping exhale and an all encompassing weakness. Darkness overtakes the endless snowy expanse of the parking lot in lurching, agonizing seconds. 

It's a voice that brings her to awareness. Two, if she tries really hard to listen past the ringing of her ears. A quiet, almost panting sort of murmur, a repetitive and uneasy cadence, words indecipherable. Alongside it, a honeyed hushing, disorganized yet even. 

An experimental twitch of her fingers reveals the sensation of warmth. She feels herself cradled in someone's lap, held safe and secure against their chest. Heat radiates through her sallow, scrawny frame, and in her haze Catra follows the instinct to curl further into it without thought. The words slowly tune clear.

"She's so small. Scorpia, she's so small." Catra is pulled closer still, strains her eyes further shut, hears the sense of  _ wrongness _ in the quiver of Entrapta's voice. "I can hold all of her. She's so small."

Sounding calmer than she probably is, Scorpia's arm brushes against Catra's shoulder as she moves to rub her back. There's an edge to her voice that makes waking up feel like the most urgent thing in Catra’s entire world. 

"I know, En. I know. We'll talk to her, yeah?" An exhale. Nervous, strained. "But right now, you need to try and stay calm. We're gonna help her, okay?"

A whimper, another swift but muted sigh. Catra forces herself to face the light. A groan escapes her chapped lips, and in her grimacing she feels the skin split. Copper warms her tongue as she attempts to speak.

"M'okay," she tries. She wants to sound frustrated. She wants to sound fine. She wants to not want this so goddamn bad. As her eyes finally adjust, the colors and shapes of her friends swim into focus. Fear follows suit.

Again she makes to thrash away, but Entrapta's grip is firm and Catra's resolve is weak. She grips the bleeding portion of her lip between her teeth. Her breathing is starting to come out fast and forced, while the need to hide away somewhere dark and small clouds her mind with thoughts of Mother. 

Mother would want her to get up. Mother would hate to see her weakness. Fasting and restriction are an act of strength, after all, and she is no child of her Mother's if she cannot be strong. 

Catra once more falls limp in Entrapta's arms. Fear of the inevitable sees her giving up the struggle. Eyes distant, she tries to defend herself. Tries to lessen the punishment, somehow, some way.

"I'll do better," she breathes, pleading. "I can do better. I swear. I can be strong, please." A habitual flinch overtakes her at the response only she hears. "I'll be stronger. I'll be stronger."

Red fills her gaze, a dry cherry shade of fabric she's all too familiar with. A sweater she bought. The hand that settles on her forehead is large, soft, and gentle; a far cry from the touch she was anticipating. It lingers, slips down the side of her face with apprehension and purpose. Then, it calls to her.

"Come back to me, Wildcat. You're safe. You're here with me and Entrapta, we've got you. Come back to me." 

The words hurt her heart. Something inside her tethers to the sentiment, and she's pulled through the antigravity asteroid debris of her own mind, drifting further from the sun and closer to the earth. She doesn't know she was crying until she feels Scorpia brushing away tears with her thumb.

And, suddenly crushed under the weight of her own existence, Catra shudders violently. 

The backseat of Scorpia's car is stuffy and warm. Entrapta's coat hood is pulled down to hide her face. Catra's brain feels like it's splitting in two. Everything is still sort of swirling together, a blur of then and now that makes her simultaneously want to throw up, smoke several cigarettes, and scream.

“Hey.” Scorpia’s eyes meet her own, a compassionate and excavating force that Catra longs to turn away from, but can’t. “How are you feelin’ Wildcat? Are you dizzy at all?”

She’s jostled slightly, there’s a plasticy crunch to her right, and Entrapta slips a bottle of water into her lap without a word. Without waiting for an answer. Without so much as a breath. The silence is jarring, and despite her usual complaining Catra finds herself desperate for the sound of her voice.

"I-" her voice catches. Maybe because of her aching dry throat, maybe because she sees the unadulterated panic in Entrapta's eyes as she cranes her neck to look at the girl’s face. Something snaps back into place inside her, and she quickly takes stock of their situation. 

The three of them are crammed into the backseat, Catra held in a lean over Entrapta's lap. Her legs are splayed over Scorpia's, who's hovering over them both. Entrapta's fingers are wound tight against her shoulders, and her arms are rigid in their hold on her; anguish frozen in place. 

She may not spend much time with them. She may pretend not to care, not to see, not to know. But Catra knows. Catra sees.

Catra cares.

When Entrapta starts getting still, it means she needs physical sensation to take her out of whatever endless looping labyrinth the situation has put her in. More often than not she'll want something that Scorpia won't quite understand, like balling up a fist and hitting her forehead, or biting down on her knuckles. Not for the pain, for the distraction. And that’s something Catra understands all too well, especially when Entrapta’s arms are wrapped around  _ her _ , stiff and tense and not doing anything to calm herself down. 

Without sparing it another thought, Catra reaches up and tugs on Entrapta's pigtails. She's always gentle when she does this, keenly aware of her own strength, but today she takes just a little extra care. 

"I'm okay," she finally says, pulling the girl's hair in a lazy rhythm. She clears her throat, finding more surety in herself as she continues. "See? Bright eyed and bushy tailed and fucking with you like always." With a pained little smile, she adds, "it's pretty lame to panic over me, y'know."

Scorpia’s brows are upturned in an almost painful seeming way, and she looks as if she wants to intervene. She hovers a hand near Catra’s shoulder, fingers twitching, and pulls away. She gives them both a tired smile, and climbs out of the back. At the sound of the door closing Entrapta somehow stiffens more.

“You fainted,” she states, voice small. Her neck jerks upwards with enough force to shift her hood. Her eyes are less cloudy, but she still has that same cycling intonation as Scorpia hops back into the driver’s seat. “You weren’t getting enough oxygen. Or you were in severe pain. Or maybe your blood sugar was-”

“I’m okay,” Catra insists, tugs the girl's pigtails, bares her teeth in an uncertain grin. When Entrapta finally moves, it's to brush her finger across Catra's bottom lip, feather light, swiping the blood away. 

In contrast to the timidity of her actions, her cheeks are puffed in a pout, and though her gaze is directed at the floor her eyes are alight like shifting gears. "You're not okay." She draws Catra's head down to rest on her shoulder, so they don't have to see each other. "You're not okay at all ."

"She's right, you know," Scorpia's voice drifts out from the front. They start to pull out of the parking lot, radio murmuring, buildings passing by in a snowy blur. "Something's wrong with you, Wildcat. I mean, nothing is  _ wrong _ with  _ you, _ I just- I've never seen you like that." She glances at them both in the rearview mirror. Her hair suddenly seems more stress gray than dyed. "I'm worried about you, Catra." 

She can't help it. She tries, she really does. Her tears are soaking through Entrapta's hoodie, and Catra knows the girl can feel it. She doesn't want to cry, but it's too much. The fainting, the cold, the overwhelming sense of being  _ loved. _ Her mother's hand rests on the base of her neck, unseen touch sizzling. Some garbled, ugly noise crawls its way up from her throat; a weighty mix of frustration with herself and toddler-esque levels of exhaustion. She doesn't have an answer for Scorpia. She spends the rest of the ride with her face buried in the worn denim of Entrapta's overalls.

When the car comes to a stop and the radio cuts out to full quiet, Catra again finds herself aware of previous unawareness. Her eyes are heavy, and there are hands on her face. Her jaw. Her pulse point. Part of her knows she can see Entrapta looking at her, see her lips moving, but nothing quite registers. 

Drained of will to fight, she drinks in the feeling of being shifted into Scorpia's arms. Their eyes meet as well, and she doesn't mean to stare like a lost, longing stray in the rain. Some far off part of her still wants to struggle, but then Scorpia has them sat down on a couch, and she's rocking Catra side to side, and honesty bubbles thick up her throat like burning nausea. 

"Talk to me, Wildcat," the woman pleads with the candle-lit tone of a parent soothing their child of night terrors. "You don't need to tell me everything. Just tell me enough to help."

Cracking, crumbling concrete. A shuddering inhale. The floorboards creak under Entrapta's boots as she sways to and fro, waiting with little visible patience. 

"I haven't eaten since yesterday," Catra starts, a half truth delivered with a crackling voice. "I couldn't- I couldn't sleep. Cigarettes. Walking. I- I can’t. I can’t." 

With this statement, Entrapta runs from the room. She can just barely hear something about protein amid the clunking footsteps. 

"There ya go," Scorpia croons, her praise somehow a bandage and wound all at the same time. "It'll be alright, Wildcat. We're gonna help you." At the incessant shaking of the girl's head, she softens to a whisper. “You don't need to say anything more. I've got you. I'm gonna take care of you, 'kay?"

With a heaving cough, a gasp for breath, Catra slowly nods. She should be lashing out at Scorpia for holding her like this, for speaking to her with such kindness, for not just leaving her collapsed in the parking lot. She doesn't need to be cared for. She's an animal, a predator. Sleek, lean, and strong in all the ways necessary to kill what comes near. Though she can't find it in herself to be angry. She just breathes in the heady aroma of candle smoke and comfort until the sound of clinking dishware draws both of their attention to the doorway.

She doesn’t really know how many minutes have passed, or how many years have rewound through her flickering consciousness, but Entrapta has a tray full of soup. It would be more accurate to call it a carefully arranged grid of small mugs, all filled to the brim with broth and a few other finely diced ingredients, all trembling as the usually clumsy girl is careful to pad her way over to them. Catra shifts herself from Scorpia’s lap, sniffling, trying not to look at either of them. Shame roils her stomach.

“Tiny soup!” exclaims the rather frantic looking Entrapta. One of her pigtails is close to coming undone, and there’s a variety of new and oddly shaped stains on her overalls. “You need to eat and raise your body temperature to regain your strength. You’re probably going to feel weak for a little while, but that should go away within an hour or so. You’ll need to tell me if it persists.”

She continues, listing off her various observations and recommendations. Mid sentence, she wraps Catra’s shaking hands around one of her coveted mugs of tiny soup. Scorpia runs a hand up and down the girl’s back, nodding along and asking the occasional question as Entrapta rambles on and on. 

A smile comes to Catra’s face, and she rushes to hide behind some soup. 

**Author's Note:**

> do i have an explanation for this? no. is it disorganized as hell and basically venty brainvomit? yes. am i going to write more of this au? is that even a question of me at this point


End file.
